On vacation

On the beach, in the cities and in the mountains

Mikhail Gauzner

Photo taken in: Odessa, 1940 - Interviewer: Alexandr Beiderman

Me and my mother, Riva Gauzner, in the dining hall of the recreation center in Arcadia. My mother is first from the right at the front table, and I am sitting next to her. This was before the Second World War, in the summer of 1940, when my mother and I went on vacation to the Arcadia recreation center in Odessa, but I do not remember much about it. I was only four years old at the time.

Irina Soboleva-Ginsburg

Photo taken in: Sevastopol, 1927 - Interviewer: Ella Orlikova

My mother, Judith Begam. She went to the seashore on her vacation every summer. My mother was a pretty girl and always had a number of admirers. She had her first romance when her family was living in Losinustrovskoye. They had a tenant, a poor student, who fell in love with her. He proposed to her, but my mother’s father said, “Are you out of your mind? Do you really want to marry this hobo?” This poor young man happened to be Marc Chagall. Then they took different roads.

Arnold Fabrikant

Photo taken in: Odessa, 1928 - Interviewer: Nathalia Rezanova

This is me with my cousins Nina Patlazhan (née Bogomolskaya), on the left, and Nina Gorodetskaya, on the right. I remember very well that our parents took us to be photographed on a weekend, on a summer day. The girls behaved themselves but I was naughty, and while the photographer was preparing to take photographs I was pinching the girls from behind. That is why they look so annoyed.

Evgeni Chazov

Photo taken in: Sochi, 1956 - Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya

From right to left: my mother Friena, my father Pyotr, my sister Ludmila, and myself. This photo was taken during our family vacation in Sochi on the Black Sea. After I finished school I left Ternopil and entered the Pedagogical College in Rivne. In summers I would have training in Rivne and then I would go to Ternopil on vacation. As an exemplary Soviet family, we often spent vacations together. My father very often obtained free trips to the Crimea and Caucasus.

Evgenia Gendler

Photo taken in: Anapa, 1961 - Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya

My daughter, Victoria, on the beach in summer. We went on tours to different places around the USSR, often traveling with our children to the Crimea and the Caucasus Mountains on vacation. Our children liked swimming in the sea and we enjoyed our time together. Sometimes we spent vacations with our friends. When our children grew up and had other things to do, my husband and I went to recreation centers in Subcarpathia.

Abram Bashmet

Photo taken in: Khust, 1959 - Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya

My wife Maya with our sons Yuriy (left) and Yevgeniy (right) on vacation. We took our boys to the seashore every summer. Though they are different, they have always been close to one another. They went to pioneer camps together every summer and played in bands. Music tied them together. My sons were raised knowing their Jewish spirit

Grigoriy Golod

Photo taken in: Kyiv, 1941 - Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya

Me and some friends on the bank of the Dnipro River. I am on the left wearing a dark shirt. My friends and I attended an aviation club where we made replicas of airplanes that we set off on Trukhaniv Island on the Dnipro. I was also fond of football and liked to go to football matches. Sometimes my father bought me a ticket, but when I had no ticket I joined a bunch of friends and we managed to get into the stadium without tickets. We would also go to parades and dance clubs together.

Semyon Ghendler

Photo taken in: Zhytomyr, late 1930s - Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya

These are my parents, Zachari and Yelizaveta Ghendler, during a vacation on the Teteriv River in Zhytomyr. On weekends, my parents and I would go to the riverbank. My father would go swimming and my mother watched him from the bank. My parents met in 1925 and fell in love with one another. My father was a strong, handsome man. My mother was young and fair-haired. They made a beautiful match. In 1926 my parents got married. It was a traditional Jewish wedding